I now have a crude script that the beams can talk to; the protocol save for one quirk is as documented. Next is figure out how to drive the screen and Live Results. By the way, I can't get Live Results (I downloaded straight from axtime) to run properly on my Linux laptop.

And apparently the $700 Axtime software wants to take beam data and drive the screens all from one serial port. For that a custom splitter is required, although it's not hard to rig up. Still, takes points away from Axtime.

And I'm (and Murray?) not the only one who toyed with the idea of rolling our own timing software. Some clubs in the States did this too and from my googling even willing to give it away, but those mentions are from a few years ago and no longer current.